Hey, and welcome. How are you? What’s new? What’s happening? How’s your new year treating you? Have you chosen a goal? Have you chosen a word of the year? Do you do any of that? Uh, I would love to hear what you’re up to. You can always just come over onto Instagram and DM me. But, We are still on winter break and today I dropped my little boys who are my rainbow babies.

So after each one of my losses, I was able to have a living little boy. And so those little boys are getting kind of bored of being home. We’re trying to get back into a routine and I was really excited when this Facebook ad popped up on my feed from the locals roller skating rink that they were doing this day camp for the last few days of winter break.

And as I dropped them off and I stayed the first few minutes to make sure everyone was settled and like got their. Uh, roller skates on, all this stuff. The teacher started teaching the kids. And guess what lesson number one was? If you’ve done any sports where falling is an option, like skating, skiing, snowboarding, roller skating, probably like water sports, uh, you know where this is going.

Yes, they immediately had all the kids sit on the floor. And learn how to get up. They started telling them how awesome it was to fall because that means you’re learning and you’re getting better. And I love this reminder of what I want you to know as well. Falling is inevitable. If you’re not falling or failing, you’re living a pretty boring life.

And the best thing you can learn is to embrace the fall and embrace the fall. And learn how to get back up again. Now in roller skating, there are a few ways to get back up. Some of them look a lot like Bambi trying to stand up on the ice. Maybe you crawl to the wall and drag yourself up that way. The teachers demonstrated how not to get up by.

So I want you to visualize this sitting on your bum, putting both hands on the ground behind you, and both skates flat on the floor and trying to get up that way. It’s exhausting and nearly impossible. They show the kids what not to do. And then they showed them how to get one foot behind them, put one foot up, kind of like they’re proposing to someone, right down on one knee and then stand up.

And of course, because kids are such fast learners and they listen so well, All the kids from the biggest down to this little tiny person who must have been like four years old, they all started getting up and then they did it again. And then the teacher said, now we’re going to play a game where you fall and get back up.

And that’s what I want to offer to you today. Let’s talk about falling and how to get back up and then, um, I’m going to add a bit of a game for you to practice and shake off all the fear. Because the primal part of us that gets up on wobbly, rolly things that put us off balance immediately tenses up.

Emotions get close to the surface. Our nervous system is activated. We are hyper aware of all the ways we can get hurt. And of course, All of this combined leads to not very much fun and not very much progress. I actually, as I was picking up my boys, uh, my littlest one was kind of sitting on the bench. He was kind of tired and I, I just asked if I could borrow some roller skates and just skate for the last 10 minutes.

And I haven’t skated since college and getting on there, I was reminded like how. Hard it can be to stay up and I immediately like almost burst into a sweat just that nervous system reaction is real You really don’t want to fall So if we can really get stuck there, right and we’ve talked about this in nervous system Like we get stuck in this freeze state, but we don’t have to stay there and we have tools to get out of it Well, I grew up in Canada and we did a lot of ice skating and we just called it skating.

And there were always kids there who would just hug onto the boards and cry and be so afraid to get out in the middle of the rink and skating became cold, miserable and scary for them. But if you look at someone like Olympic skater, Tara Lipinski, who I have to shout out, she has a podcast, it’s relatively new, all about recurrent loss and infertility and her journey.

It’s called Unexpecting and I love the conversation she’s opening up on such a big level. And she did recently have her little rainbow baby after just so many devastating losses. And it’s just, it’s a, it’s a beautiful thing. So go check that out. But I want to ask you, what is the difference between someone who lets the fear take over and someone who continues to try even when they are scared?

Someone who knows that falling is a part of the process. And someone who is paralyzed by wanting to be perfect from the get go. What’s the difference between someone who doesn’t want to get dirty or even a little bit bloody and someone who is kind of open to that and knows it’s part of the process?

Look life has already knocked you down and given you some scrapes and bruises. The question is now what? I’m gonna get you started with some of my ideas and then I want you to take this Lesson these lessons and apply them in your own life apply them where you feel stuck. So number one Falling is to be expected.

It’s such a weird world we live in where somehow we’ve gotten the idea that everything should be 100 percent perfect all the time. And if we can’t be 100%, we shouldn’t try it all. Some people blame it on modern public schools, helicopter, parenting, social media, and the information era that tells us, well, you can YouTube anything, which actually do love all the things you can learn on YouTube.

And I highly recommend it. Uh, I have built my business and podcasts with tons of help from YouTube. And I’ve also figured out. Really weird things like how to get the speakers in the back of my car to work when they’re not working like so helpful But I want you to ask yourself. What is it for you? Where does the fear of falling or failing come from?

I recommend doing a little exploring here But I also want you to take ownership of yourself. For example, maybe your mom was very critical if you made mistakes. Okay, great. That’s good information. But as an adult, now you do have choices. You can choose to not continue being critical of yourself. You can self coach through some of the sentences in your brain until they no longer hold you back.

You can come work with me to let go of all the things that are keeping you stuck. You have so many options. When we look at life, just knowing for sure that we will fall, falling gets a lot less scary. You’re going to be much more willing to put yourself out there. You’re not going to make falling mean something terrible about you.

In roller skating, the teacher said, falling is just part of the deal, and it means you’re learning. That goes for life as well. Number two, you can learn how to get back up. What is the worst thing about falling? If you’re alone, it’s probably a bruised bottom. But if you’re in front of people, oh, that bruised ego.

That white, hot blush that goes from head to toe and back again. Maybe people make fun of you to your face. Or maybe it’s all in your head, but oh, the shame. And again, this comes back to expectations. We, as a people, tend to notice falls. Part of us can’t help laughing. I remember one time I was helping a friend move a little flat trailer in his driveway by hand and for some reason it slipped and started rolling and pretty much knocked him over and crashed into his dad’s car that was sitting next to this trailer in the driveway and it all happened so fast and it all seemed to be in slow motion.

I remember just uncontrollably laughing at something that was kind of not funny and also so hilarious to my body. It’s almost like that Bursts of fear when it started rolling came out into giggles. Of course, everyone was fine minus like a little bit of denting here and there. I also went to college for a few years in Idaho and it would get so icy in the winter.

It was a fun sport to watch people wipe out over and over in the same spots and you felt kind of bad, but it was also really, really funny. So what part of falling in front of people brings up feelings for you? What are they? Why do they feel so powerful? What do these fears stop you from doing? If you weren’t afraid of falling, and you weren’t afraid of what people might think or say or do, what would you do?

Also, what if you surrounded yourself with people who also don’t think failing is a problem? Like in this skate class, a lot of the kids had never skated before, but some of them were there with their own skates and they obviously had done this a lot. How can both of these things be great? You have peers who are at your same level and you can all learn together.

Then you have people who are a bit farther ahead of you that you can watch. They can help you, they can give you tips, they can inspire you. So when you’re on the floor for the 50th time watching them zip around, listening to them tell you to keep trying to get up one more time, you know you’re going to get there.

And that’s why having a coach is so fun. They know that failing is part of the process and they know how to help you keep getting back up. Now, as I mentioned before, there are harder ways and easier ways to get up. Some take a lot of time and effort and have a low chance of success. But hey, you are welcome to try them.

Sometimes we have to choose all the wrong ways to figure out what works. That is a valid way to do something, and if that resonates with you, if you feel like that’s where you’re at, I want you to own it. You’re still getting up. And that’s all that matters. Or you can also learn from other people and find the technique that helps you move forward faster.

You can adapt to your own needs. You can refuse to get stuck. You can choose not to waste energy being mad and floundering on the floor and saying mean things to yourself. Have any of you watched the It’s So Bad It’s Good movie called The Cutting Edge? It’s about a hockey player who gets cut from his team or injured or something.

I can’t remember. But he ends up doing pairs skating with a very difficult partner and She, of course, has never found a partner that works for her and they stick them together. You know, they’re both just kind of at the bottom and It’s such a great plot, right? Well, he’s a great skater in hockey skates, but in figure skating There’s a toe pick and so there’s this amazing montage of him catching the toe pick and wiping out Over and over and over and his kind of awful partner keeps saying toe pick and it’s super annoying How can this be just like us going along and along in life, killing it at hockey and then wham, we get thrown into a different sport and it feels different and the rules are different and we keep getting our face pounded into the ice.

And everyone around us seems to have it all figured out, but we’re ready to quit. Fast forward to the end, and of course, he gets the girl, and they win, whatever, you know, competition they go to. This also reminds me of the classic Happy Gilmore, where Adam Sandler is also a person who loves hockey, but can’t get himself together and make the team, so he ends up trying golf.

And some of his skills translate, like slap shotting the golf ball. But he doesn’t have a short game and he can’t control his temper, but he has this goal of saving his grandma’s house. So he keeps trying. And after a ton of fails and falls and boos, and of course, lots of criticism from shooter McGavin and all this stuffy golf people, he figures it out and he makes it his own.

Every hero story has falls and obstacles. What sets the hero apart is they get. Back up. They take advice from wise guides and they never stop working towards their goal. You just got to get back up. And I want to say this to you who is listening, who’s feeling like I just can’t do it. I can’t get up again.

I can’t try again. I can’t risk falling again. Yes, you can. You absolutely can. You just got to do it. Number three is you learn from your mistakes. There’s no learning in getting everything right. We can’t cheat the system. Life requires some sacrifice, pain, and like I said before, some blood and some scrapes and some bruises to get what we want.

The thing about kids learning to skate is they adapt so quickly. They adjust, they pick things up. Why is that? What can we learn from them? Adult brains and bodies tend to be a bit slower and some of it is physical, but a lot of it is in our heads. It’s That we make a lot of problems up in our mind and then we believe our own stories.

We have these loud inner critics that tell us the only way to stop feeling uncomfortable is to quit. But quitting is its own kind of uncomfortable that keeps us stuck. Or maybe you don’t even start. I think if you’re gonna be uncomfortable, why not be the kind that moves you forward and helps you learn, grow, and develop yourself.

Now, I always have to put this little condition on this. Choosing to stop is always an option, especially if we are talking about building our family after loss or ending a business or a charity or a project that we started that is no longer working for us. We don’t have to tell ourselves that that is failing if we know the choice is right.

That takes courage too. That’s trying, failing, adapting, and learning. But I think for most people, we often give in to fear and doubt and let them drive our lives. That is not a fun way to live. Think about your life. What has helped you become who you are the most? Was it all the blue ribbons and the accolades and the hundred percents you got?

Or was the tough times, the heartbreaks, the missed shots? And I want to just speak for a moment about effortlessness. If you imagine a roller skating queen, just gliding all over the floor, it looks so easy or an Olympic figure skating or someone who looks amazing online or in person, they always have it together.

It looks like it all just comes easily and naturally. And maybe to some extent it does. You might be witnessing someone who has followed their heart and their intuition wherever it led them. But overall, Effortlessness is an illusion. No one who achieves greatness or even mediocrity gets there without effort.

No one gets there without failing a thousand times, without having a terrible dress rehearsal where they wonder if they should just cancel the play. Everything is hard at the beginning. It’s supposed to be. It probably took me 10 hours. I don’t, I don’t even know to put together my first podcast episode.

And now I can whip one out much, much faster. I know how to edit and record and how my microphone works best. I have my intro, my outro already recorded. I know what I want to say and I’m not afraid of my own voice anymore, but I only got here because I plugged away slowly, made tons of mistakes, recorded entire episodes without pressing record, like whoops, uh, feeling all the feelings that come with putting yourself out into the world.

Whatever you want in your life, if you want to be effortless, just know. That’s not really real, but you can get to where things are a lot easier by doing the work up front. I want you to, especially if you’re feeling down about where you want to be and and ever getting there, imagine that feeling of the synchronicity of going around the roller skating rink with the wind in your face.

See the joy and the smiles and how it feels when you land a trick. How smooth everything flows. That’s something to really enjoy as well. That’s something you can enjoy now in your head as you imagine it. And it’s something that I want you to enjoy if you are there. It’s really human nature to not notice all our wins.

And to not notice what comes easy. But I want you to think, what is one thing that was really hard for me that now it’s easy? What’s one thing that I had to fail and fall a lot of times? To make it easy. Just notice that process and then whatever You know goal you have right now Use what you’ve learned to help you get there.

I Want to challenge you today, and this is a fun part I want you to purposely fall whether it’s literally like going roller skating if you like me have not been on roller skates in a long time or getting up on the mountain or Whatever it is, I want you to give yourself the opportunity to fall.

Or if it’s metaphorically, right? What do you want to do? Where you have the option of failing or falling flat on your face. I’m going to challenge you this month to try to do that at least 10 times. If you want to go crazy, try to do it 100 times. But, let’s make this a game. Let’s make this fun. Let’s make it a challenge.

Let’s do it together because I am right here cheering for you. I know that the more we just put ourselves out there and mess up. The better it’s gonna be so think about what you’ve been holding off on what you’re afraid to do. Let’s just do it Everything that happens in our lives is an opportunity to learn I truly believe that if and when you want to it is available for you Maybe not right away But be open to it It truly does not matter how many times you fall, friend.

It only matters that you get back up. It’s a cliche because it’s true. Maybe you’re feeling a bit battered right now. Rest, breathe, and then keep going. Maybe you’re on the edge of stepping out into something that you know will be hard, but amazing. Rest, breathe, and then step forward. Expect to fail. Learn how to get up.

Watch the way you’re talking to yourself. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Surround yourself with people who are going to cheer for you when you fall. Find a guide or a coach to get you there easier. Remember that effortlessness Is an illusion and for the love my friends again, have fun with this.

If you are breathing, if you have running water, a cell phone and a way to listen or read this podcast, dude, that’s incredible. Yes, our hearts have been broken. Yes, life is freaking tough sometimes and it’s also so, so good. Let’s light up that disco ball, pump up your favorite jams and get out there and roller skate.

And I want to add a PS, if you do go roller skating or do something else fun where you can fall, send me a picture on Instagram at amy. smoothstonescoaching. I totally want to see. I want to see the wins and the falls and just all the smiles that go along with it. Have an amazing week. I love you. I’ll see you next time.